


long time coming

by blainedarling



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-15
Updated: 2014-05-15
Packaged: 2018-01-24 22:10:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1618781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blainedarling/pseuds/blainedarling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Bucky warms up to the idea of getting his hair cut.</p>
            </blockquote>





	long time coming

Just the concept of brushing had been something that had taken Bucky a long time to warm up to. It wasn’t that he particularly liked the straggly locks that framed his face, the hair becoming increasingly scratchy and matted as he left it that way. 

Back at the clinic - a time he prefers not to dwell on, if he can help it - they used to give him a mandatory twice a week scrub down. They would comb through his hair with a metal toothed brush, the points of it digging in deep enough to draw blood, searching for any kind of insects or pests that could infect their precious soldier. Anything that could make him remotely human, and therefore less like the weapon they wanted him to be.

When he finally accepts to the fact, he does so picking up the soft bristled brush that Steve had bought for him as part of setting up the room for him in his apartment.  _Their_  apartment. Although Sam and Natasha more often than not are there, too, but really it is Steve and Bucky’s. Steve had even nailed up a sign on his door with his name on it, a grainy old photo stuck underneath it of the two of them. Just in case he should ever forget again.

 

His room was full of more of these reminders, reminders of who he was, and those who supported and cared for him. A ticket stub from a movie him and Steve had been to back in ’38. A dance card from the first date he’d ever been on. Sally, her name had been.

The hairbrush was just one of the many human touches that littered the room, Steve slowly helping him to adjust and come back to life as he once knew it. 

He walks into the living room with the brush cupped in the palm of one of his hands, quirking a half smile as the three look up at him. His three friends. He clears his throat, walking over to stand in front of Natasha and offers the brush to her.

She raises one eyebrow, her long legs kicked up onto the coffee table in the exactly the way that Steve hates, but it’s never been like Natasha to follow rules. “What do you expect me to do with that?” she asks, amusement in her tone as she fixes her gaze onto Bucky. 

He doesn’t really know what to say to that, the conventions of social interaction are still sometimes hazy to him, even though it’s been almost a year now. He looks down at the hairbrush and frowns. 

“Because I’m the girl, is that it? Would that be why you’re handing  _me_  the hairbrush?” Natasha continues, and on the other side of the room Sam snorts quietly. 

Bucky draws his hand back, mumbling an apology under his breath and hears Steve sigh somewhere behind him. He takes the brush from Bucky’s hand without hesitation, and taps his shoulder to get him to sit. 

“You shouldn’t tease him like that,” he warns Natasha, not for the first time.   
She just rolls her eyes playfully, reaching across to give Bucky’s prosthetic arm a friendly punch. He doesn’t feel it. 

So, there begins the ponytail. Steve brushes out the knots and Bucky manages not to complain when the brush snags on the toughest bits, even though he knows his friend doesn’t mean to not be gentle with him. He washes it out over the bathroom sink, Bucky scrunching up his nose at the fruity smell of the shampoo.

“I’ll take you to the store tomorrow,” Steve promises him, with an affectionate grin. “We can pick out something more to your taste.”  
Bucky settles and closes his eyes. “My mom always liked that about you. That you would eat your fruit, when I would rather use them as ammunition in my makeshift catapult.”

Bucky finds that having it pulled back out of his face helps him think better, it clears his vision. He doesn’t mind it, either, the look of it in the mirror with it tied up neatly in a rubber band. Along with the new clothes he’s been accumulating, while he couldn’t say that they’re what he’s used to, he starts to feel more like himself again. 

People seem to look at him differently, too. He didn’t like going outside much before, people seemed scared almost. Although that should have been nothing new, not really. But now people are polite, they are friendly, and he comes to learn that the modern world perhaps hasn’t changed all that much when it comes to how one looks on his fellow man.

The young barista at the locally owned coffee shop opens up to him as he makes his latte - because, honestly he still isn’t sure what a Starbucks is or what the green woman with the flaming hair has to do with his morning coffee. He opens up to Bucky about his student loans and why he thinks that Columbia is better than Yale. The lady at the front desk of the gym that Steve signs up to starts smiling at him as he walks in, flipping her hair over her shoulder and sometimes even offering a wave. Bucky’s still not sure what to do with that.

He thinks he could get used to the ponytail, as a long-term solution. But the others aren’t so convinced. They won’t say it aloud, but it still reminds them of the machine he became, rather than the man he was. Steve tells him repeatedly that he can do whatever he likes now, most of all with his hair. 

But Bucky finds the photo albums, the pictures of the two of them, and of him alone, his hair short, slicked back, stuck on end. And it looks familiar. And so he presents Steve with a pair of scissors, to which the other man holds up his hands in mercy.

“Hair brushing and washing I can do,” he laughs, taking the scissors and putting them down before reaching for his phone instead. “This I think we better trust to someone else.”

The salon smells like peroxide and Bucky feels himself tensing as soon as they walk through the door. But Steve is behind him as reassurance, and behind him still are Natasha and Sam, who claim that such a monumental moment cannot be missed by any of them. 

The hairdresser looks between the four of them as she sits Bucky down into the chair. “I’ve never seen such an audience for a haircut.”  
Bucky grins, surprising himself with his own excitement as he looks at his reflection in the mirror, the hair tumbling down his shoulders as she pulls the rubber band out. “It’s been a long time coming.”

The snip of the scissors holds such a sense of finality, as he watches the locks fall away from his head, a cool breeze wrapping around his neck and the tops of his shoulders. His head feels instantly lighter as the hair disappears in chunks, a pleased hum falling from his lips as she works her fingers against his scalp to remove all the loose bits of hair. 

Steve holds up a photo to the mirror when she’s done, one of him so much younger. But he looks like that man again now, and he lifts a hand to his head, brushing through the short locks. 

“How do you feel?” Natasha asks, snapping a photo from behind him with a gaze that almost holds a certain amount of admiration.  
Bucky stands up, brushing a few strands of hair from his shoulders and cracking out the muscles in his neck, before shrugging. “Like a man who’s just had a haircut.”

Normal. Bucky felt normal.


End file.
